Thursday, July 26, 2007

A busy "off day" for the Twins (hopefully)...

I’m not sure exactly where the rush to judgment comes from, other than it’s kind of fun. There is no evidence that MLB teams need a lot of time to arrange trades. So I stand by my assertion that Terry Ryan and the Twins have three more days to make up their mind.

But on Sunday afternoon, the Twins will know, and they’re going to want to know what chits they want to cash in. One of those chits is Torii Hunter, and there IS plenty of evidence that negotiations on contracts take a long time. If Hunter is expecting yen like the Mariners threw at Ichiro, or six guaranteed years, or something else that crosses the line from aggressive to irresponsible, the Twins should be shopping him heavily.

I wouldn’t be shocked if the we hear of a Hunter extension within the next few days, or of a Hunter trade. For the first time this season, there is suddenly a need from the Twins side for a hard deadline to these contract negotiations.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It seems every time I turn around, the $$$ and length of contract keeps getting larger for "what it will take" to keep Torii. I realize the years need to go up to get the overall package #'s up, but do you really want to be paying Torii $15M 5 years from now? What I haven't seen brought up is some sort of deal with deferred money. Why not something like 3 yrs at $15M per, plus 5 additional years deferred $$ at $5M each. Torii gets the same money, but the Twins limit their risk to 3 years. Plus they could do all that "small print" stuff with team/player options (out past the 3 yrs) based on performance items to extend the deal (or not) past the 3 years.